Winner (#1)

La Push

North of the Quinault Indian Reservation, easy beachbreak access and public lands resume for 12 miles above Queets before Highway 101 juts inland, winding through hemlock, spruce and fir rain forests, concealing the shoreline. This is temperate rain forest country, dotted with enormous, 500-year-old trees in an environment where life is replenished faster than anywhere on Earth.

Aside from one public access featuring the sandbars of La Push, the stretch of coast from Ruby Beach to Neah Bay is generally no-man's-land to all but the Hoh, Quileute, Ozette and Makah tribes. Native Americans outnumber whites in these areas, and one may be inclined to say mediocre surf spots outnumber the good ones as well, though minimal surf exploration has been accomplished due to issues of access. In the far north are the grand Olympic National Park, the Olympic National Wildlife Refuge and the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary. Ocean winds here, rinsed by their lengthy runs across the sea and by the rainfall, contain some of the world's purest air. This is a landscape which American writer William Richards deemed a "living catalog of natural superlatives."